In places where multiple languages are spoken, there is a need to provide movies, prerecorded television programs, educational videos as well as many other forms of video/audio programming in multiple languages to accommodate the multi-lingual viewing audience. Most often it desired to have the capability to play back the multiple languages simultaneously with a single video signal. One technique used to achieve this result is to use different viewing channels for the different channels. A separate prerecorded video tape is generated for each language. Each tape contains the same video information but necessarily has a different audio signal for each desired language. The tapes are individually played and broadcasted on different channels. The viewer selects the channel according to the language he wishes to hear. This method is quite obviously inefficient as it requires a number of video playback means and available television channels or frequencies equal to the number of languages in question.
Briggs, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/411,214 entitled Multi-Language Recording and Reproducing System describes a multiple language system wherein a plurality of audio tracks, each representing a different language, are encoded into the video signal using frequency modulation techniques. However, that method is disadvantageous because it employs analog techniques which compromise video quality and produce an encoded signal incompatible or marginally compatible with several classes of important communications channels.